West Midlands

This Big Lottery-funded project aimed to improve fruit and vegetable consumption in Hawbush, a deprived neighbourhood in Dudley.

'What's pants, but could save your life?' was the first West Midlands-wide NHS programme to adopt a fully integrated social marketing approach. It was the first cervical screening initiative in the UK to directly link data trends, audience segmentation and social behaviour research with the construction of an awareness campaign. It was also the NHS's first region-led cervical screening intervention to identify, measure and achieve tangible behavioural change.

NHS Stoke-on-Trent set out to reduce smoking in pregnancy rates in two high prevalence neighbourhoods – Meir and Bentilee. This was achieved through reconfiguring the existing 'Quit For A New Life' smoking cessation service and introducing a new style of peer support group (Me² stop smoking club), which focused on rewarding mums and giving them alternatives to the 'me time' that cigarettes can offer.

As part of their PRIME programme to reduce health inequalities in the area, NHS Birmingham East and North (NHS BEN) worked in partnership with healthcare consultancy Dr Foster Intelligence to design and deliver a social marketing campaign to reduce smoking prevalence in male routine and manual workers, aged 35 to 55 and living in deprived wards of the NHS BEN area.

In February 2008, Telford and Wrekin PCT and Telford and Wrekin Council launched a three-month campaign to increase levels of physical activity amongst children and their parents in Woodside, an area of deprivation with high levels of obesity.

'Taxi!' was a one-year pilot project developed by the Walsall Council Creative Development Team to encourage local taxi drivers to review their lifestyle and make positive changes.

Choose How You Move was a council-run initiative to encourage the widespread take-up of sustainable transport options, with the aim of reducing congestion and car dependency, alongside the added benefits of improved health and fitness.